Schools To Teach Orthodox Culture

With the apparent blessing of the Kremlin, the Education Ministry has defied resistance even from within its own ranks and taken a major step toward introducing an Orthodox Christian component into the public school system.

Education Minister Vladimir Filippov last week released a 30-page description of an optional course called "Orthodox Culture," which can be taught in public schools as a part of the basic curriculum if regional education officials or a school's principal decides to do so.

Filippov said he was submitting the course, developed by Orthodox educators, only for "consideration." But one of the authors said it gives a green light to those who have balked at introducing such a course and attempts to provide a framework for the wide variety of courses already taught in about 60 of Russia's 89 constituent regions.

"It means the ministry does not mind if such courses are introduced," said Hierodeacon Kiprian Yashchenko, dean of the pedagogical department at St. Tikhon Orthodox Theological Institute and one of the authors of the course. "You know our bureaucrats -- they use their offices according to their worldview. Most of them are atheists and they say it is impossible because the school is separate from the church. Yes, we are separate from the state, but we can cooperate, can't we?"

Yashchenko, who has a doctorate in pedagogical science, said he led the group of educators who compiled the program from what is already being tested in the Noginsk district of the Moscow region, Smolensk, Kursk, Belgorod and other regions of Russia. Although the intention is to immerse children in the Orthodox worldview, the course is taught by regular teachers and does not include any church ritual. "Priests may be consultants," he said.

The 30-page document is a vast catalogue of themes, including Biblical subjects, Orthodox tradition, asceticism, liturgy, literature and art. By the end of the course, a student could be asked to write a paper on one of 64 subjects, such as "Faith and Science," "Moscow as the Third Rome" or "Orthodox Understanding of Freedom."

The ministry says the course, which it recommends teaching once a week in primary school and twice a week in secondary school, is to be part of the main curriculum but with attendance to be voluntary.

"Russia is a multinational country, and even within one subject of the federation there are places where there are practically no Orthodox," Interfax quoted Filippov as saying in Novosibirsk. On the other hand, he said, Orthodox culture has existed in Russia for more than a thousand years and there is an "objective need" to learn it in school.

The program does not spell out how the decision to teach the course is to be made, whether a certain percentage of parents, for instance, has to request the course. And if the course is taught, there is as yet no provision for children who choose not to attend.

Religious education in public schools is a highly sensitive and controversial subject anywhere in the world and especially in Russia, where interpretations of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state vary greatly, and a system of church-state relations is being painfully developed after decades of Soviet atheism.

The program appears to have bypassed the Education Ministry apparatus, which Orthodox Church officials have described as among the most reluctant to cooperate with the church.

"We have not produced, ordered, reviewed or issued any such program! We have a [secular] religion studies program, but no 'Orthodox Culture!'" Tamara Tyulyaeva, an official with the Educational Ministry's department of general education, said angrily in a telephone interview Thursday. "There were such attempts, but we have a simple answer: We are a secular school system and will never introduce any confessional program -- neither Moslem, nor Jewish, nor our dear Orthodox. Otherwise we'll get such a mess!"

Opponents of religious education in public schools -- who at various stages included State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov, Deputy Speaker Irina Khakamada and the Yabloko party -- say it will divide people and sow xenophobia.

"This document smacks of the Middle Ages and obscurantism," government spokesman Alexei Volin was quoted in Friday's Gazeta as saying. "If the Education Ministry considers it necessary to introduce studies in religion, the course should include the basics of all religious world views and the history of atheism in addition."

The Orthodox Church has argued that secular religion classes do not offer students a choice of worldview, because religion is taught from a nonreligious perspective. An Orthodox class, however, would add a moral dimension otherwise missing in the post-Soviet school system and would help reverse the proliferation of crime, drug-addiction and alcoholism, the church said.

"The moral disorientation of many young people, their loss of a meaning in life, becomes the soil for various vices and threatens Russia's future," Patriarch Alexy II wrote in an address to a state-church conference on education in October. "That is why all of us -- religious leaders, [state] authorities and society -- have to realize that school should give not only a sum of knowledge, but also an upbringing."

The conference, which took place Oct. 10-11, appears to have played a pivotal role in the Education Ministry's paper, which is dated Oct. 22. In addition to Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist leaders, the conference was attended by presidential envoys Georgy Poltavchenko and Sergei Kiriyenko, State Duma members and Educational Ministry officials.

Izvestia quoted Poltavchenko -- the presidential envoy to the Central Federal District who is a practicing Orthodox Christian -- as saying at the conference that it is time for an "Orthodox Culture" course across Russia. Kiriyenko, from the Volga Federal District, also named education as one of the fields where the state should cooperate with "traditional" religions. With most post-Soviet school programs still permeated with atheism, a religious course would offer students an alternative, he said.

A former employee of the Moscow Patriarchate's department of education and catechism, who did not want to be named, said the decision was likely made on the sidelines of that conference. He also said the government's program to help Muslim education in Russia, aimed at preventing Russian Muslims from traveling to the Arab world's often radical schools, played a role in the Moscow Patriarchate's lobbying efforts.

That perhaps explains why official Muslim leaders did not protest the Education Ministry's decision. "We are not against our Orthodox brothers finding out as much as possible about their culture," said Mufti Ravil Gainutdin, chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia. He stressed, however, that the voluntary aspect is crucial and complained that Russia's Muslims and other religious groups are unable to reach all schools because they "suffered even more than the Orthodox Church during the Soviet period," Interfax reported.

Nafigulla Ashirov, the Mufti of Siberia who is seen as a more radical Muslim leader, strongly opposed the Orthodoxy course. "Russia is living through one of the most complicated moments in its history, and raising this issue when the Chechnya wound is bleeding in the south of Russia, when skinheads are walking the streets of Moscow, is a direct violation of the Constitution," Ashirov said in a telephone interview Friday.

Human rights activists are among the fiercest opponents of the program. The For Human Rights group led by Lev Ponomaryov complained to the Prosecutor General's Office earlier this year about a textbook titled "The Basics of Orthodox Culture" by Alla Borodina, but the complaint was thrown out.

"The textbook's authors help the growth of xenophobia and nationalism in our society," Interfax quoted Ponomaryov as saying. "This textbook, which is already used in state schools, imposes the views of one confession on schoolchildren and thus violates the principle of a secular state."

Yashchenko said the second edition of Borodina's textbook will be corrected to take into account human rights activists' complaints.

"We in the Church are first and foremost against violating the will of children and their parents," he said by telephone Friday. "If it turns into the Divine Law [the doctrinal course taught in tsarist Russia], if we don't take into account that most children are not church-goers, if it does not create a field for thinking, then we will definitely kill the cause. Then it will turn out like before the Revolution, when everybody went to the Divine Law, knew the prayers and holidays, but lived differently."

WHOO-HOO ping!!! FL, please ping additional EO's as you like.

And now, ahem, time yet again for one of my favorite posts of all time.

LET HOLY RUS' ARISE!

The Paschal Epistle Of the Most-Blessed Metropolitan Anastasii, the First-Hierarch Of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad
1940

CHRIST IS RISEN!

Dear brothers and sisters, near and far, abiding both in the Diaspora and in our Fatherland. Pascha, this festival of life, of light, of love and of brotherhood unites us anew into one family of Christ, enlivening the hope within us of the soon-resurrection of Russia. When the sun rises, it first of all gilds the tops of the hills, and of the trees, and of other tall objects; then it illumines the entire surface of the earth, penetrating even into the chasms of the earth, into mountain gorges, and into the clefts of rocky cliffs.

The same can be said of the quickening rays of the feast of Christ's Resurrection -- they fall first of all upon those whose hearts are always directed fixedly towards the heavens -- towards those spiritual peaks of Christian humanity; after which they embrace all other people with their gleam, not excluding even such as have generally become accustomed to slithering about in moral quagmires, without lifting up their eyes to heaven. And everywhere, wheresover the light of Pascha might extend, it gives rise to life and joy.

We -- wanderers and newcomers amidst other peoples that we are -- are fortunate indeed in having brought with us this precious pledge from our Native Land, which from of old so came to love and so profoundly to assimilate the grace-endowed suspiration of this festival. From the moment that Rus' came forth from out of her baptismal fount, she began to burn brightly with the light of Pascha, which ceased not to illumine the whole of her thousand-year-long history. Nowhere in the world does Pascha so obviously manifest its royal merit as the holiday of holidays and the triumph of triumphs as in the Russian Land. The latter truly was transfigured in those bright days; and, as the Bride of Christ, she did gleam then with joy and spiritual beauty.

As it once "was good" for the Apostles who found themselves in the rays of the Lord's Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor, in like manner did the heart of the Russian people take sweet delight in glorifying the risen Savior, and burned, as it were, with a radiance; and when the Bright festival would finally draw to a close and the triumphant paschal peal of bells -- of that wondrous heavenly music which had poured forth upon the unencompassable expanses of our Native Land -- would finally fall mute, then would our Russian folk return to their daily round of life, feeling a reluctance -- and even, as it were, some degree of sadness -- not unlike what the Apostles experienced in their descent from Tabor after the Transfiguration of their Divine Teacher.

It was in the light of Paschal radiance that there came into being that entire philosophy of life of the Russian nation which had become accustomed to seeing the entire world from the point-of-view of the eternal victory procured for us by the Risen Savior, Who had vanquished the power of hell and death. From hence sprung its (the Russian people's - ed.) moral fortitude; its exclusive serenity in enduring the blows of fate; the inner harmony of its heart; its peaceful resigned attitude to death; its unwavering faith in the final triumph of righteousness -- however much it might sometimes be scorned and abused on earth; this enlightened love of nature and of all men, whom [the Russian] considered to be his brothers, even though they might be alien to him by blood. It is here that one should seek the main key to the solution of all the mysteries of the Russian soul, which has not ceased from arousing the curiosity of the western world. However much the temptations of the world might delude and seduce him, the Russian believes unwaveringly that Christ alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and that outside Him, and without Him, there is no true happiness; and life itself loses its meaning, becoming an oppressive burden to its bearers. Humanity can live only to the degree to which it is capable of renewing itself and being reborn in Christ, Who constantly repeats the miracle of resurrection over it.

The experience of these present times convinces us of this truth with especial clarity; although, unfortunately, in the main, it does so in a negative way. Observing world events around us, as they rush along in such a mad headlong dash, we see that the farther people depart from Christ, the farther they depart from the sources of life, and the more quickly do they draw near to death; or, to re-phrase it in a better way: they themselves draw her to them. We have examples of this before our eyes.

Turn your attention to those monstrous weapons which belch forth a thousand deaths; to those frightful explosives and poisonous gases capable of destroying multitudes upon multitudes of people, like insignificant insects, and of turning an entire region into a desert; is not all this the enlargement of the domain of death and hell -- poised, at present, to consume the entire world, which had been redeemed by means of the death and resurrection of Christ, the Giver of Life.

If the time has not yet come "to turn swords into plough-shares, and spears into sickles" -- for war is frequently inevitable as a restraining principle against the spread of evil, violence and injustice on earth -- then, in any event, Christian nations should hasten to soften its horrors, rather than multiplying for it its means of destruction and widening the very sphere of its murderous action, adding a so-called total character to it. These manifold underground shelters, with the construction of which states so occupy themselves during a war -- do they not speak clearly of the fact that people, by their cruelty, have deprived themselves of any right to live freely in the world, to take delight in the sun's radiance; and that they must, instead, hide themselves away in underground warrens from pursuing foes, in the manner of lizards and other creeping things?

Thus, departing away from Christ as the Source of Light, we again immerse ourselves into the chaos and darkness of barbarism. The very conquest of the elements: of the sea and air -- wherewith our age so prides itself -- by no means makes of man a true king over nature; rather, it makes him the victim of the latter. Having become accustomed to following her mechanistic, mortifying norms, he is prepared to surrender his whole life and culture to those selfsame laws of soulless mechanics, and not only that aspect thereof which is external and material, but even that which is internal and spiritual, sacrificing toward that end the royal freedom of his person and the autocracy of his creative reason. He desires to create not only a governable household, but governable thought, as well; and even conscience, applying to them that very same principle of compulsion which he applies to other spheres of life.

"Fraternity or death" -- this fearsome slogan of the French revolution, this "brotherhood of Cain" -- as one of the activists of the latter so accurately defined it, is being reborn anew in the XXth century, finding its reflection -- especially so -- in the theory and practice of communism, which attempts to inject this pernicious principle into the universal human consciousness. Having quenched in itself the luminary of the eternal commandments of Christ, contemporary cultured humanity has lost the measure of absolute truth and righteousness, having replaced them with conditional human truth, and sometimes even with outright falsehood.

It is not surprising that the world, having lost a firm moral foundation beneath its feet, is teetering to every side and submitting itself to the chance dictates of the moment: to considerations of benefit and advantage, first of all, which currently dominate all the loftier motives of human actions. Russian bolshevism brought the entirety of this sorry wisdom of the present age to the most extreme and crude degrees of its development; hence, our soul, as before, is repulsed by it, sensing the breath of hell and corruption in it.

However much we might thirst for the sooner rebirth of our Native Land, we would not want to see the kingdom of a Ching'his-khan or of a Tamerlane established there in place of Holy Rus' -- although each of these, to a certain degree, was more sublime and more humane than the merciless and corrupting ruling-organization of the Soviets; nor would we want to see an ant-hill of labor come into being there, descending deep into the earth and, as it were, become as one with it.

We desire to see our renewed Native Land as none other than free, radiant, joyful, peaceful, spirit-bearing, strong with the righteousness and love of Christ, rising aloft, like Jacob's ladder, from the earth to the heavens, in order to unite them, the one with the other. And we know that the risen Savior has the power to re-establish her as such, even were she to stink as badly as Lazarus, four days in his tomb. Although, to our consolation, she has not yet reached a state of total corruption, which usually bears witness to the onset of death.

Those who had the opportunity, in the newly-united Russian regions in Poland or in Finland, to meet face to face with the red-army boys who had come from simple peasant surroundings, bear witness with one heart and with one soul to the fact that the venom of communism has not yet had a chance to penetrate into the depths of the folk-organism and to poison its governing nerve-centers. Today's Russian has not yet forgotten the faith of his fathers, although he is forced to conceal it from the zealous gaze of the godless authorities. The Russian Orthodox soul yet lives in our people, and can easily put forth the shoots of new life, if the grace of resurrection but breathes upon it.

Arise, then, O Lord, our God; may Thine hand be lifted up. Forget not Thy wretched, miserable ones to the end. Let God also arise in the hearts of all the other nations of the present day, that they might extend to one another a mutual, brotherly embrace, having forgiven everything by the resurrection, and having ceased from the bloody fray; and that they might again acquire their spiritual strength, their happiness, and their true life in Christ, the Victor over hell and death.

April 1940. Belgrade.

The Resurrection of Holy Russia

Elder Alexius of Zosima Hermitage (+ 1928): “Who is it that is saying that Russia is lost, that she has perished? No, no, she is not lost, she has not perished and will not perish—but the Russian people must be purified of sin through great trials. One must pray and fervently repent. But Russia is not lost and she has not perished.”

Elder Barnabas of Gethsemane Skete (+ 1906): “Persecutions against the Faith will constantly increase. There will be an unheard-of grief and darkness, and almost all the churches will be closed. But when it will seem to people that it is impossible to endure any longer, then deliverance will come. There will be a flowering. Churches will even begin to be built. But this will be a flowering before the end.” -----------------------------------------------------------

"..Blessed art thou, O Russian Land, purified by the fire of suffering! Thou hast gone through the waters of baptism; thou passest now through the fire of suffering; thou shalt also enter into rest. At one time, the Christians reverently used to gather up the sand in the Colosseum, saturated with martyric blood. The places that witnessed the suffering of the martyrs and the ending of their earthly lives, became especially venerable. And now, all Rus' is an arena of passion-bearers. Her soil has been sanctified by their blood, her air -- by the rising-up of their souls to heaven. Ho, sacred art thou, O Rus'! Not mistaken was the ancient writer who said that thou art the Third Rome, and that a fourth was not to be. Thou hast transcended ancient Rome by the multitude of thy martyrs' spiritual feats; thou hast also surpassed the Rome that baptised thee [Byzantium], by thy standing firm in Orthodoxy -- and thou shalt remain un-excelled until the world's end. Only that land which was sanctified by the suffering and the earthly life of the God-Man is holier than thee in the eyes of the Orthodox.

Shake off the sleep of despondency and slothfulness, O sons of Russia! Look upon the glory of her sufferings and be purified, be washed from your sins! Become strengthened in the Orthodox [Christian] faith, in order to be found worthy of dwelling in the household of the Lord, and of inhabiting the holy mountain! Start up, start up, arise, O Rus' -- thou, that from the Lord's hand hast drunk the cup of His wrath! When thy sufferings come to an end, thy righteousness shall go with thee. The nations shall come to thy light, and kings -- to the brightness that riseth above thee. Then cast thy gaze about and see: behold, thy children shall come to thee from the west, and from the north, and from the sea, and from the east, blessing Christ in thee throughout the ages.

Amen."

Saint John Maximovitch

PS. I had the honor and joy of praying in the room where Saint John reposed just a few weeks ago. The room is currently being modified into a chapel above St Nicholas Cathedral here in Seattle.

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